American Gothic, without the Pitchfork
May 3, 2015 11:04 AM Subscribe
Brian Carpenter is a master of dark Americana. Hailing from Boston, his style is fluid, mostly referencing early 20th Century American jazz and other folk/roots music. His first band that caught attention, Beat Circus worked in a self-described "American Gothic" style, releasing three albums with three different themes. But this is not his sole musical endeavor.
Beat Circus' first album, Ringleader's Revolt fits in with the Band's title, referencing circus themes (musical and thematic) and establishing their string band/brass band orchestration. Tracks such as Mandalay Song include an instrument, not widely heard in American music anymore, the tenor banjo, featured in many melodic rather than strictly chordal and arpeggiated roles.
Moving on, they explored more American styles. The next album touched on similar territory through a song cycle entitled Dreamland, referring to the doomed Coney Island theme park of the same name. The track Ghost of Emma Jean started a roots-Americana framework that would set the scene for their Appalachia-Steampunk album Boy from Black Mountain.
Brian has also created another group dedicated to early American jazz Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra. Referencing a similar style with a tweaked orchestration they released Hothouse Stomp which used pre-big band jazz as its source material; again featuring quintessentially early 20th century American usage of instruments like tenor banjo and musical saw. The next released album worked off of lesser known jazz tunes of the 30s, including the amazing Beethover Riffs On, originally written by John Kirby.
Their soon-to-be-released album Hot Town looks deeper into 1930s and 40s jazz traditions of New York and Chicago, taking note of the Stride style in songs such as Alligator Crawl (apologies for the iTunes link - as the album is unreleased).
*should be stated that while not personally affiliated with Brian in any way (guaranteed he has no idea who I am), I did mix Beat Circus at a Boston event hosted by Sxip Shirey (previously, previously, I can verify he has NO idea he knows who I am...I ran into him on a 3 train one day). They were one of the greatest acts I've ever had the pleasure of mixing. Well, them and Reggie Watts (too many previous-es, just search him)…who was on the bill the next week…
Beat Circus' first album, Ringleader's Revolt fits in with the Band's title, referencing circus themes (musical and thematic) and establishing their string band/brass band orchestration. Tracks such as Mandalay Song include an instrument, not widely heard in American music anymore, the tenor banjo, featured in many melodic rather than strictly chordal and arpeggiated roles.
Moving on, they explored more American styles. The next album touched on similar territory through a song cycle entitled Dreamland, referring to the doomed Coney Island theme park of the same name. The track Ghost of Emma Jean started a roots-Americana framework that would set the scene for their Appalachia-Steampunk album Boy from Black Mountain.
Brian has also created another group dedicated to early American jazz Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra. Referencing a similar style with a tweaked orchestration they released Hothouse Stomp which used pre-big band jazz as its source material; again featuring quintessentially early 20th century American usage of instruments like tenor banjo and musical saw. The next released album worked off of lesser known jazz tunes of the 30s, including the amazing Beethover Riffs On, originally written by John Kirby.
Their soon-to-be-released album Hot Town looks deeper into 1930s and 40s jazz traditions of New York and Chicago, taking note of the Stride style in songs such as Alligator Crawl (apologies for the iTunes link - as the album is unreleased).
*should be stated that while not personally affiliated with Brian in any way (guaranteed he has no idea who I am), I did mix Beat Circus at a Boston event hosted by Sxip Shirey (previously, previously, I can verify he has NO idea he knows who I am...I ran into him on a 3 train one day). They were one of the greatest acts I've ever had the pleasure of mixing. Well, them and Reggie Watts (too many previous-es, just search him)…who was on the bill the next week…
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posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:18 PM on May 3, 2015